Time to Depart Read Online Free PDF Page B

likeable scamp. She said I was too hard on him. She wanted us all to be friends; this gave Pa a chance to inveigle her into any devious scheme, especially if he could do it behind my back.
    Though he claimed to be destitute (a piteous but fake complaint), my father had managed to dispatch Helena with instructions to get me to Tyre if she could - and with a two hundred-thousand-sesterces banker's draft. She had a free hand to spend this exorbitant sum. He must have trusted her taste. In thirty years he had never given me such leeway with his private funds.
    We had naturally been investing for ourselves as well; no point travelling to one of the Empire's richest markets unless you buy cheap from the caravans. Using Helena's money mainly, plus my own meagre savings, we had laden ourselves with enough bales of silk to dress our entire families like Parthian dancing girls and still have some over to sell. Helena's ex-husband had imported peppers, so we shied off those, but that left plenty of other spices-to bring home in casks that hummed with addictive scents. We had purchased Arabian incense and other perfumes. I had acquired a few extras at markets when Helena was not looking. Then finally, just when I believed we were coming home, Helena Justine had coerced me into buying glassware for Papa.
    She had made me do the bargaining, though she herself handled a portable abacus with a verve that made the traders sweat. She chose the stock. Helena had a good eye for a flask. Grumbling aside, glass was the desirable commodity. My father knew what he was doing. There were bowls and bottles, jugs and beakers in delicate pinks, metallic greens, sulphurous blues; vases with snakes of molten glass trailing around their elegant throats; tiny perfume flagons like little doves; jugs with furled spouts and fine etching. There was cameo glass, at a price that rivalled the incense. There were even spectacular funeral jars.
    All this glass was a serious burden. We had crept home, trembling for the safety of Pa's fragile water sets and dinner bowls. As far as I knew, it was all in one piece when we sailed into Portus on the Providentia. All I had to do now was transport it upriver to Rome. If I wanted to remain Helena's private demigod, I had to make sure I did not slip with the bales.
    All our own packages had already been taken over to Ostia on mules. I had booked a passage up the Tiber on a barge that was leaving today. Now I was on edge about Pa's damned glass. I did not intend to endure the rest of his lifetime being derided as the son who smashed the equivalent of two hundred thousand pieces of silver. This had to be done right.
    Petronius had some sympathy; he was a loyal friend. But he lacked the direct interest I had myself, and I didn't blame him for that. It was hard enough for me to interest myself in another man's profit margins. Only Helena's pride in her commission kept me going.
    We were having trouble finding transport. We wanted to take the glass to the old harbour using the canal. Some idiot (me) had declared this the best way. No one would hire us a boat, though. After a couple of houts of fruitless begging Petro left me on the jetty, saying I was to keep looking out for a skiff while he approached the harbour staff and mentioned his official position in a casual manner, hoping to get us fixed up with reliable rowers that way.
    He was gone so long I reckoned he must have slipped off for breakfast without me. If I was lucky he might bring me back a squashed roll with a sliver of limp cheese and a quarter of an olive. More likely the rascal would saunter back whistling and say nothing. Great. The glass had been unloaded from the Providentia and left on the quay, so I had to stay with it.
    I had had enough. I tried to sit on a bollard, but they're never designed to let a backside rest there. While seagulls squawked scornfully I cursed my father to Hades and back, and even muttered about Petronius. I was wasting time here when I